In December, I was able to play with , but the first one will be sold in the West. It was a Chinese market prototype with several rough edges, but even so, it made a pretty compelling case for its own existence. Now, three months later, the company appeared at the MWC with the finished version that is intended to be sold on this side of the equator. The big news is the price, which is set at €1,599 (around $1,690) for the model, with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the same as Samsung’s Z Flip 4. The only difference is that with Samsung’s phone, you’ll get 12GB of RAM but only 256GB of storage.
When I spent a few days with the phone, I found many features to be praised, such as the fact that it folds. Honor certainly feels that her second-generation hinge, which keeps the phone neat in her pocket, is worthy of attention. And she promised that the hinge will withstand 400,000 folds before failing, and she’ll find herself gravitating toward that inner screen more than she might expect. While not quite as well equipped as the 6.45-inch outdoor screen, the foldable 7.9-inch OLED is good enough to sit back and enjoy a movie or your emails. And it’s fast enough to run just about anything you want to throw at it without breaking a sweat.
If there’s a problem, it’s that these devices may not be the future of foldables as much as the narrower, more modern clamshells. The devices like and are more pocket and wallet friendly than their swole counterparts. And that counts for a lot for people who don’t feel the need to pull out a small tablet when browsing Instagram. But for the kind of people who, like me, are nerdy enough to want a machine that they could theoretically get some work done on the go, the meatier versions are still king.
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